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The 20th century’s two world wars and their aftermaths forged the strategic underpinnings of Turkey’s self-identified role in the world and guided its international relations through the Republic’s first nine decades. Global developments, as much as Turkey’s own dramatic internal evolution of the past decade, have rendered obsolete the concepts of national interests in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region which both Turks and their allies had comfortably understood and presumed they shared. How might Turkey most productively engage with the US as well as its neighbors in Europe and beyond to pursue their inextricably interdependent national interests in a turbulent region facing historic national redefinitions? Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone, a distinguished career diplomat and currently the President of the American University in Cairo, will address these issues at the Hüsnü Özyeğin Annual Lecture on Modern Turkey.